When I was a child, I was given a necklace engraved with two words:
Insulin Dependant.
At first, it was simply something I was told to wear. But quietly, it became part of my everyday life. School, holidays, sleepovers - it was always there.
It was my safety net. A small reassurance that if something went wrong and I couldn't explain what was happening, someone would see it and know that I was diabetic.
As I grew older, I realised that without it, something felt quietly out of place.
That necklace wasn't just jewellery.
It was protection, identity and peace of mind.
But as I got older, I also became increasingly aware of the compromise that came with wearing medical jewellery.
It needed to be recognisable. That was its purpose. In an emergency, a first responder, medical professional or simply the person standing next to you needed to understand that what you were wearing carried important medical information.
Yet too often, being recognisable meant looking clinical.
Medical jewellery felt like something you wore because you had to. Something separate from the watch, bracelet, ring or chain you had actually chosen to wear.
Years later, working in fine jewellery, I kept returning to the same question:
Why couldn't medical jewellery be recognisable when it mattered, but still belong in everyday life?
Not hidden.
Not disguised.
And not decorative for the sake of it.
Simply considered, functional and beautifully designed.
Because I understood something from having worn medical identification for most of my life: if something is designed to protect you, it needs to be on you when it matters.
And for that to happen, you need to actually want to wear it.
For a long time, I thought that was the problem I wanted to solve.
Then I experienced a hypo that changed my understanding of medical identification entirely.
The morning everything changed
I experienced a severe hypo overnight.
By the following morning, my blood sugar had fallen to the point where I had lost control of my body. I was slurring my words and unable to properly communicate what was happening.
A friend was with me.
They knew I was diabetic. They knew something was seriously wrong.
But they didn't know how to help me.
I was unable to explain that I was experiencing a hypo or tell them what I needed. And for someone without that knowledge, being told that a person is diabetic doesn't necessarily tell you what is happening in that moment.
Did I need sugar? Did I need insulin?
Those are two very different responses, but I wasn't in a position to explain which one I needed.
And the medical identification around my neck couldn't tell them either.
That was the moment something shifted for me.
For years, I had trusted that necklace to speak for me if I couldn't speak for myself.
But that morning, I realised its limitations.
It could identify my condition.
It couldn't tell someone how to help me.
That distinction stayed with me.
Knowing what condition somebody has and knowing what they might need in an emergency are two very different things.
Suddenly, the question I had been asking for years became much bigger.
It was no longer simply:
How do you make medical jewellery people actually want to wear?
It became:
How do you create medical identification that people want to wear every day, that remains recognisable when it matters, and that can provide meaningful information when the person wearing it can't?
That was the moment I pressed the green button on Asper - lets GO.
Building something different
I didn't want to disguise medical jewellery.
Its medical purpose is precisely why it exists.
Instead, I wanted to design around that purpose.
To create pieces that could be recognised as medical identification when necessary, but that didn't feel clinical or separate from everything else you choose to wear.
And crucially, I wanted Asper to be able to say more.
Because an engraving has physical limits.
Your medical story often doesn't.
There can be information about your condition, medication, allergies, emergency contacts and individual circumstances that simply cannot be communicated in a few engraved words.
My own experience had shown me what that limitation could mean when the person wearing the jewellery was no longer able to fill in the gaps.
But I also knew that my experience alone wasn't enough.
Where Sam, my co-founder came in
I understood the problem from the perspective of someone who had lived with diabetes since childhood.
And through my career in fine jewellery, I understood how something personal enough to be worn every day could be thoughtfully designed.
But if Asper was going to rethink medical identification, it needed another perspective at its core: that of a medical professional.
That's when Sam joined the team.
As a medical professional, Sam brought valuable clinical and industry knowledge to Asper, helping us approach the problem not only from the perspective of the person wearing medical identification, but also from the perspective of the person trying to help them.
That meant asking a different question.
Not simply:
What does the wearer want someone to know?
But:
What does the person trying to help need to know?
His expertise helped shape our thinking around how medical information could be presented, what may be useful in an emergency, and how we could bridge the gap between the individual and the person trying to help them.
That combination became fundamental to Asper.
Lived experience. Medical knowledge. Fine jewellery design.
Three perspectives coming together around one problem.
Why Asper exists
As we began looking beyond my own experience, the scale of that problem became even clearer.
According to a statistic attributed to MedicAlert, only 7% of people living with chronic illnesses wear medical ID jewellery. *
For me, that raises an important question.
Why are so many of the people who could benefit from medical identification choosing not to wear it?
Perhaps part of the answer is that for too long, medical jewellery has asked the wearer to compromise.
To choose function over design.
To wear something that identifies a condition but can say very little about the person behind it.
To put something on every morning because they should, rather than because it naturally belongs alongside everything else they choose to wear.
I know what it feels like to rely on medical identification.
I also know what it feels like to discover its limitations at the moment you need it most.
That's why I didn't set out to create another medical jewellery brand.
We set out to reconsider what medical identification could be.
Something recognisable enough to communicate its purpose.
Considered enough to become part of what you wear every day.
And capable of connecting someone to meaningful information when you may not be able to provide it yourself.
Because medical identification can only help if you're wearing it when it matters.
And if only 7% of people living with chronic illnesses wear medical ID jewellery, then the challenge isn't simply to make medical jewellery better.
It's to create medical identification people actually want to wear - and that can do more for them when they need it most.
That's why Asper started.
* The 7% statistic and MedicAlert attribution should be verified against the original source before publication.
